Carrier route record

YXIND→ORD

Republic Airways · Indianapolis to Chicago

Flights: 2,713
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 52%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.

Republic on IND to ORD lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,713 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 576 at 77.6% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Republic's IND to ORD record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 48 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,656 completed flights

Avg delay

70 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.06%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.5%

Every carrier on IND to ORD, 5,201 flights

These figures cover 2,713 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Republic against every carrier on IND to ORD

Republic flew 2,713 of the 5,201 flights on IND to ORD, most of the route. Its 82.4% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 82.4% to SkyWest at 67.2%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 77.6% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 67.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 649 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on IND to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways (this page)	2,713	82.4%	70 min	2.06%	B
Envoy Air	576	77.6%	89 min	1.91%	B
United Airlines	749	67.8%	82 min	2.40%	C
American Airlines	514	67.3%	87 min	6.42%	C−
SkyWest Airlines	649	67.2%	109 min	6.32%	C−

American Airlines cancels 6.4% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

Flight by flight

Republic flight numbers on IND to ORD

Departure window

When Republic runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 29 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am862 flights86.4%
8am–11am598 flights83.1%
11am–2pm775 flights82.9%
2pm–5pm282 flights77.7%
5pm–8pm150 flights58.8%
8pm–5am46 flights87.8%

Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.8% on time, against 87.8% for the 8pm–5am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 862 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Republic on IND to ORD through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, December worst

December is the weak month at 71.0% on time, against 90.6% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. December was the busiest month here, with 319 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.5%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Republic runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 51% of the 33,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

National Airspace System
51%
Late-arriving aircraft
22%
Carrier
19%
Extreme weather
8%

51% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 17,000 minutes out of 33,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 32,805 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 2.06% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.04%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 177 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.5% on time across 2,716 flights, 6 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 6 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 2,713 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.

What to do with this

Booking Republic on IND to ORD

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 90.6% on time and December 71.0%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,656 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures